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An Abortion-Issue Centrist?

How pro-choice is Barack Obama? Steven Waldman, the editor of Beliefnet, breaks down the controversy (a hot one in anti-abortion circles) over the “Born Alive” bill, a piece of legislation that Obama voted against in the Illinois state legislature that “related to babies who are accidentally born, alive, during abortions.”

“I have a swirl of mixed emotions and thoughts, and realize that collectively they will offend nearly everyone,” Waldman writes. Among his conclusions: “Obama has lied or dissembled on parts of the controversy”; “Some anti-Obama forces have taken a legitimate issue and turned it into an illegitimate smear”; “Obama today would support the Born Alive legislation”; and “Obama’s claims that he is an abortion centrist are becoming increasingly difficult to believe.” Waldman concludes:

My personal view is that Obama made a mistake in opposing the bill. He obviously made a mistake politically. But more important, he made a mistake in concluding that because the legislation was coming from the pro-life forces that it was therefore a trick entirely lacking in merit. He claims he’s about bringing people together but in that case, he did not succeed in forging a workable compromise. In fact, when workable compromises came before him, he either voted no or did not embrace them. No, he did not show himself to be an infant killer. That charge is, as he’s said, a lie. But he did show himself to be uninterested in forging common ground around abortion. He now says he wants to do just that but given his ardently pro-choice record, the burden of proof is on him to show that he’s sincere about that.

Speaking of abortion, there are two questions I’d like to see put to Ms. Palin during Thursday’s V.P. debate, and which Gibson, and Couric (let’s forget Murdoch’s hired-hand Hannity) should have already asked :

1.)Why did you as mayor of Wasilla force female rape-victims reporting the crime to pay out of their own pocket for the forensic-kit and exam needed in the work-up (see NYT 9/26/08)?

2.)Was your policy of requiring rape-victims to pay for their own forensic exams a result of your publicly stated belief that even women who become pregnant as a result of rape should be required to carry that pregnancy to full term and birth?

I see no reason why Palin, as candidate for the office of Vice President of the USA, should continue to be shielded from answering these questions publicly.

One supposes that this is an issue because it has to be, but it is so irrelevant to the problems of today. Any consideration given to Obama’s beliefs on this matter (or McCain’s or anyone else) should be seen in the context of the President’s role. It is not to be the spiritual leader, religious bigot-in-chief or any other defender of the moral quicksand. The President’s job is to carry out the will of the people – some 60%+ of whom consider Roe v. Wade as settled law – within the authorizations allowed or required by Congress and the Supreme Court.

It is the Present Occupant’s delusion of a Grand Crusade Presidency, in every respect, that calls into question the viability of democracy’s only long-term experiment with shared power. Previous to this President, the tri-part government was known as “checks and balances”. Today it is blank checks and deficit balances. Put the Presidency back into the executive box – acting for our health, safety, and welfare, without all the pious posturing.

Obama’s views on abortion don’t matter. His views on using nuclear weapons (the ultimate retro-active abortion), trade with other countries, energy conservation, habitat conservation, fiscal conservation, “defense” spending, war powers, extricating from unjust wars, and many other issues should come up long before abortion – which should not come up at all, since such decisions are not his (or any President’s) to make.

This particular horse is so dead, there’s not even enough left to keep flogging away at.

I’m no Obama fan, but clearly the only mistake he made here was to underestimate the ability of “pro-life” forces to cook up a no-win scenario, then use it against him relentlessly. He could either have voted for the bill in question and — potentially, as it appeared at the time — compromise women’s right to choose; or vote against it and have to withstand the accusation of supporting infanticide.

Waldman’s claim that Obama is not “centrist” enough on this matter is also ridiculous. So what if he’s not making enough effort to concede to the “pro-life” forces? I know of no “pro-life” advocate who is willing to concede anything, themselves. To demand that Obama make concessions, but refuse to make any oneself, is disingenuous.

Someday the American electorate will mature past the point where the need is felt to flail away at emotionally-charged, ideologically-formed issues such as this. Unfortunately we are, collectively, no better than 3 year olds, so we’ve got a long way to go yet.

The born alive bill seems like something we could all agree on- whether or not the mother wants the infant, it should be protected if it makes it out of an abortion alive, right? I don’t think many rational people are for infanticide.

Barack Obama is firmly committed to an agenda of abortion-related policy changes that, if implemented, would greatly increase the numbers of abortions performed.

In the first place, there is really no basis for dismissing Obama’s position on the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act as a mere “mistake.” It is well documented that Obama led the opposition in the Illinois state Senate to legislation to extend legal protection to all babies who are born alive during abortions, and that he did so on grounds that he believed that what he called a “previable fetus” should not be defined as a legal “person,” even though the legislation applied only to humans who had achieved “complete expulsion or extraction” from their mothers, and were alive. Obama’s later claim that all such babies were already protected by a different Illinois law is untrue, and also has nothing to do with the reasons he gave at the time. Nor does the evidence suggest that he has changed his thinking, as Mr. Waldman suggests. As recently as August 19, 2008, the Obama campaign issued a document that quoted one particular sentence in the Illinois legislation as a particular justification for Obama’s opposition. Here it is: “A live child born as a result of an abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person and accorded immediate protection under the law.” The August 19, 2008 Obama document called that sentence “Language Clearly Threatening Roe.” The documentation on this issue is provided here://www.nrlc.org/ObamaBAIPA/WhitePaperAugust282008.html

Further data that bears on the question of whether Obama is a “centrist”: Obama is a cosponsor of the “Freedom of Choice Act” (FOCA, S. 1173), a proposed federal law that, separate and distinct from Roe v. Wade, would invalidate any state or federal law or policy that in any way would “interfere with” access to abortion, including parental notification laws and all restrictions on government funding of elective abortion. It would, as the National Organization for Women put it, “sweep away hundreds of anti-abortion laws [and] policies.” On July 17, 2007, Obama stood in front of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the lobbying-political arm of the nation’s largest abortion provider, and pledged, “The first thing I’d do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That’s the first thing that I’d do.”

Roman Catholic Cardinal Justin Rigali, in a September 19, 2008, letter to members of Congress, explained with great clarity the sweeping power of the language contained in the FOCA: “First it [the FOCA] creates a ‘fundamental right’ to abortion throughout the nine months of pregnancy, including a right to abort a fully developed child in the final weeks for undefined ‘health’ reasons. No government body at any level would be able to ‘deny or interfere with’ this newly created federal right. Second, it forbids government at all levels to ‘discriminate’ against the exercise of this right ‘in the regulation or provision of benefits, facilities, services, or information.’ For the first time, abortion on demand would be a national entitlement that government must condone and promote in all public programs affecting pregnant women.” Rigali added: “We can’t reduce abortions by promoting abortion. . . . We cannot reduce abortions by insisting that every program supporting women in childbirth and child care must also support abortion. No one who sponsors or supports legislation like FOCA can credibly claim to be part of a good-faith discussion on how to reduce abortions.”

Obama also advocates repeal of the Hyde Amendment, the law that since 1976 has blocked almost all federal funding of abortion. In other words, he wants to repeal one of the most successful “abortion reduction” policies ever adopted. By even the most conservative estimate, there are more than one million Americans alive today because of the Hyde Amendment. According to a 2007 NARAL factsheet, “A study by The Guttmacher Institute shows that Medicaid-eligible women in states that exclude abortion coverage have abortion rates of about half of those women in states that fund abortion care with their own dollars. This suggests that the Hyde amendment forces about half the women who would otherwise have abortions to carry unintended pregnancies to term and bear children against their wishes instead.”

Although Speaker Nancy Pelosi and most other Democratic congressional leaders are hostile to the Hyde Amendment, the law has been extended anyway because President Bush issued a letter in early 2007 saying that he would veto any bill that weakens any existing pro-life policy. However, because the Hyde Amendment must be renewed annually, things could change quickly under a president determined to re-establish federal funding of abortion on demand.

Obama has also pledged to make abortion coverage part of his proposed national health insurance plan.

Obama even advocates repeal of the national ban on partial-birth abortions, which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld in 2007 on a 5-4 vote, in a ruling that Obama harshly criticized. Indeed, one of the major purposes of the “Freedom of Choice Act,” according to its prime sponsors, is the nullification of the ban on partial-birth abortions.

Here is one more example of the extremes to which Obama is committed to an expansively pro-abortion policy agenda: Across the nation, crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) provide all manner of assistance to women who are experiencing crisis pregnancies, and they save the lives of many children. A very modest amount of federal funding is going to such centers in some states. Pro-life lawmakers have pushed legislation to greatly expand such funding, but it has been blocked by lawmakers allied with the abortion lobby. Late in 2007, RHrealitycheck.org, a prominent pro-abortion advocacy website (representing the side hostile to such federal funding), submitted in writing the following question to the Obama campaign: “Does Sen. Obama support continuing federal funding for crisis pregnancy centers?” The Obama campaign’s written response was short, but it spoke volumes: “No.”

Douglas Johnson
Legislative Director
National Right to Life Committee (NRLC)
Washington, D.C.//www.nrlc.org
legfederal–at–aol-dot-com

I find it kind of hilarious that during the primaries, Obama was not sufficiently pro-choice, but now he is being attacked as too pro-choice. I know part of this is the different electorates, but I think a lot of it is due to the willful ignorance of those during the primaries who insisted Obama was going to sell out a woman’s right to choose.

Of course, he made a mistake in opposing that bill. He allowed the Socialist in him to sway his decision. I’m sure some of his “Christian conscience” will come out if he’s asked again. Yes, it will…NOT!

I think Palin is an abortion-centrist. So her personal belief is that she would never have an abortion unless her life was threatened. There are also many other beliefs, but she won’t impose them on anyone.

She’s adamantly against jailing abortions.

Compare Obama and Biden…

Biden is not against partial-birth abortion, or even notification of the parents.

While we spend our energy apologizing for Obama’s views on everything from Abortion, to the bailout, to offshore oil drilling, to new nuclear power plants, to FISA, to escalating the war in Afghanistan and invading Pakistan, the reality should be settling in that he’s not the one we need. We need NADER. Nader is the only candidate who is right on all the issues and is a proven advocate of the people against big corporations.

What is the REAL point of your raising this topic now? This issue is a peripheral–though divisive–one. It has nothing to do with dealing with the problems of running the country. We’re in an economic crisis, and we are involved in two war fronts which are further sapping our economic resources. You’d have us turn away from those important points to focus on this?

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The Thread is an in-depth look at how the major news events and controversies of the day are being viewed and debated across the online spectrum. Compiled by Peter Catapano, an editor in The Times’s Opinion section, the Thread is published every Saturday in response to breaking news.